


Fish And Chip Paper

by Saziikins



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Post-Season/Series 04, Sherstrade Month, Sherstrade Month 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 16:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9556181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saziikins/pseuds/Saziikins
Summary: Greg has been running from his demons for far too long. They finally catch up with him, but perhaps those demons are also his salvation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic dealing with Greg's sorrowful looks throughout both series three and four. This does deal with references to depression, so be warned if that's a problem for you to read. There is something in Rupert's performance that gives Greg so much melancholy, and I always watch and wonder where it's from. So this is trying to deal with some of those threads... but I want to pull at them a bit more, so there may be more on this theme in future. 
> 
> For now, this is a semi-experimental, slight mess of a fic. I'm not wholly sold on it, but I wanted to post it because it's Sherstrade month.
> 
> It kind of ties into day two's theme, which was London and the prompt Hyde Park. Though I didn't make it explicit.

There is a saying that today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. Greg’s dad used to borrow the cliche whenever Greg had a bad day at school or college. Greg's dad didn’t work in the newspaper world; he only bought the Sun three days a week and only then to throw onto the fire. But the analogy stuck. Have you had a bad day? ‘Well, today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, Greg’, he would say.

Greg had never understood what his dad meant. A bad day was never just a bad day for him. A bad day still sticks with him like a dark cloud blocking out the sun. If his bad days had been written in print, they would have been written onto the side of buildings, immortalised for centuries. So, no, it doesn’t feel as though a bad day can be thrown away quite as easily as his dad used to suggest.

He stretches his legs out in front of him as he peels the fish and chip paper open. The food is wrapped in plain packaging, not newspaper, thank Christ, because he doesn’t want headlines proclaiming ‘murder’ imprinted in his chips, thank you very much.

The bitter vinegar brings him sharp relief, and the smell of flaking cod takes him back to memories spent by the sea. He used to sit in the dark with his mates and eat fish and chips and pass around a bottle of cheap wine, hidden away in a brown paper bag. It was good in those days, by the sea, running on the muddy beach and playing football.  The fish and chips in London never taste so good; the chips aren’t soft enough, the batter soggy. 

He draws his shoulders up to his chin as the unmistakable figure of Sherlock sits down beside him on the bench and he extends a hand out to nick a chip. Greg swats his hand. Sherlock huffs and folds his arms. They stare out ahead as Greg eats his food in silence, picking at his fish with the blue plastic fork. 

He licks the grease off his fingers when he’s done, and scrunches the paper up. 

“Are we talking now?” Sherlock asks and Greg shrugs his response.

“I never said we weren’t talking,” he replies, not looking at him. It’s bitterly cold out. In his memories of fish and chips, he always ate them in the summer. It was always a treat back then, eaten on the sweetest of days. Now he has chips when he’s miserable, when he can pop out of his flat, grab and bag and eat in the park. He rubs his cold hands together. 

Belly full, he leans back and shrugs again and drinks in the silence. It doesn’t suit Sherlock to be so quiet. There’s something about him when he is deathly silent and dressed in his black coat, the collar up against his pale cheeks, black hair around his eyes. He becomes a shadow, or maybe a ghost. There’s nothing sinister about it, it’s just that Greg can’t read his moods or draw words from him when he is like this. Not anymore, anyway. 

The only way to draw the truth from Sherlock is to deduce him, and somewhere down the line, Greg has lost the art. Perhaps Sherlock has drawn into himself, tortoise-like. Perhaps they’re shadows together these days. 

“Ask whatever it is,” Sherlock says.

“Come on,” Greg mutters, folding his arms. “You don’t actually want the questions, and I don’t think I want the answers either.”

“Well, that’s true.”

Better to leave it, Greg thinks. The dark cloud that settled over him when Sherlock jumped from Bart’s roof has never truly left. It’s darker now, now the harsh reality that Sherlock is a murderer has properly embedded itself into his skull. He doesn’t know how he comes back from that. 

Headlines aren’t just tomorrow’s fish and chip paper anymore, dad, he thinks. They’re on the internet, forever, dug up again and again and shared around the world over and over. Mycroft might be able to bury the truth, and perhaps he can sue a newspaper or every single one of them, until every reference to Sherlock’s murder is erased. But he can’t silence every whisper, stamp out every conspiracy theory. 

It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true though, is it? 

Perhaps Sherlock and Mycroft will twist it all somehow, until eventually Greg doesn’t even remember what’s real anymore. Just like Sherlock’s death. Does grieving for a living man make the grief less real? Does the fact that he is still grieving for a living man matter at all? 

“Why are you here?” he asks eventually, when the bench digs into his spine and the chill bites at his cheeks.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Sherlock replies. 

“That doesn’t explain why you came looking for me.”

“Why does anyone do anything?”

Great, Greg thinks, as he rolls his eyes. Mr Enigma has to bury his words in coded sentences and Greg’s head is pounding too much to begin to decipher him. 

“You’re cold,” Sherlock says, reaching over and touching his gloved hand to Greg’s. “Come to mine.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll go to yours.”

“No to that too.”

“You can’t sit out here all night.”

Greg snorts. “Try me.” 

Sherlock sighs, and Greg takes that moment to rise to his feet. He yawns and rolls his shoulders, and bites back a curse as Sherlock stands up too. “You’re being ridiculous,” Sherlock tells him as Greg grabs the fish and chip paper and chucks it in the bin. He marches off, but Sherlock is hot on his heels. “If you’d only-”

Greg rounds on him. “If I’d only what? What do you want from me, exactly? Do you need me to bail you out of something again? Go and fetch your brother from a cell? Whatever you want, Sherlock, just name it.”

Sherlock studies him. “You weren’t like this yesterday. You were normal yesterday, when you brought the case round, so what changed between then and now?”

“Nothing. Nothing changed. Go home.” He swallows and wipes the drizzle from his face. But he cannot face another battle, and a hand, hesitant, presses between his shoulder-blades. 

“Greg?” Sherlock prompts.

“It was better when you kept forgetting my name, you prat,” he chokes out. He digs his shoe into the soft mud as he shuffles his feet. “I could shrug it all off when you called me George and Gary. Sherlock clearly doesn’t care, so I don’t care, so it’s all fine. It’s all fine.”

“Greg…” Sherlock starts and stops again. The hand falls away.

“This morning.” Greg pulls a face and presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose as he starts to explain the very thing he wasn’t going to talk about. “I went to the break room, and there was a newspaper on the side, and I picked it up. And it said you’d found the Black Pearl.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And next to it, there was this other article. It said ‘who is Sherlock Holmes?’ And it said all the stuff everyone knows… 'he’s a consulting detective, he’s controversial, he once faked his own death'…”

“Yes, that’s all true too.” Sherlock almost sounds proud. 

“Yeah, it is. All of it’s true. It’s there in black and white. And do you know what else it said? It said ‘Sherlock Holmes was a murder suspect, but video evidence shows he is innocent’. And I…” He spins round to face him. “Fuck, it’s not true, is it? You murdered someone. The papers have got it wrong. Your brother lied. Everyone lied. You lied. Everyone keeps lying and pretending it’s all okay, but none of it is okay, is it? It’s not ‘fine’.”

Sherlock takes a small step back. “No,” he agrees. “No, it’s not fine.”

“No, it’s not.” Greg takes in a lungful of air and his breath shakes as he exhales. “It’s not okay, Sherlock. I’m…” He swallows, and lets the stillness take him over. He watches Sherlock. His face is filled with pain and sorrow. Greg sees it all, as clearly as he has ever seen it in Sherlock. That he hurts, all over, the same way Greg hurts. They breathe in the same pain, their blood runs with the same darkness. 

“You said I was a good man a few weeks ago,” Sherlock murmurs. “Didn’t you mean it?”

“I meant it when I said it.” He growls. “Hell, I still think it. You’ve got a reason for everything, you and Mycroft. I get that. I’ve always known that. Shit, I always knew your brother was a bit dirty. It’s how I got away with taking you to crime scenes all those years.”

“You never actually took me there,” Sherlock corrects. 

“No, you’re right, you came and went as you pleased. Still, I think… I think back, every day, to when I heard you had killed yourself and I keep coming back to it and thinking that I have never, ever felt anything worse. And I still feel the same way I did that day.” 

It’s like someone keeps coming at him with a knife, and burying it deep into his flesh, he wants to say. He hasn’t moved on, he wants to say. I wake up every morning, and forget for a moment that you’re alive, he wants to say. 

The grief coils around him again, as it always does when he tries to sleep and when he first wakes up. He’s been filled with this ache for so long, and never once has he got close to saying a word of it aloud. Sherlock reaches for him, and he shatters. He’s tugged into Sherlock’s arms, pulled against his chest and when he sobs, when he cries, he doesn’t know what any of it’s for. 

There isn’t enough time in the world to put everything right. There aren’t enough words to say the things he has buried inside him for so long. That it pains him to know that Sherlock is a murderer. That he questions everything about himself because he has already forgiven him for it. He has forgiven Sherlock everything, as if all he has ever committed were the smallest of misdemeanours. 

“Come to mine, and eat chips,” Sherlock murmurs into his hair as he rubs Greg’s back.

“I’ve already had chips.”

“Have more chips. My sister says they help.”

Greg shakes with another sob, or maybe it’s an attempted, desperate laugh, as he grips tighter to Sherlock’s coat. “I wanted… I wanted to protect you. And I failed.”

“No.”

“Sherlock, God, you don’t understand. You don’t understand because you don’t remember what I remember. You weren’t coherent one of those first times I met you. When you told me I wasn’t allowed to leave you. You don’t remember that, do you?”

“No,” Sherlock whispers. 

“And I have always, always…” He wipes his eyes and Sherlock’s hold on him seems to tighten. 

“You’re a good man,” Sherlock whispers. He leans back and grips Greg’s biceps. “The best. You can’t blame yourself for all my mistakes.”

“But I’m all I have to blame. You think I don’t know?” He lifts a trembling hand and holds Sherlock’s collar between his thumb and forefinger. “I know, Sherlock. I know how alone you feel, and I know you lost control on the drugs, and I know you’re not over Mary, and I know you feel…” His shoulders shake.

“You know I feel just like you do.”

Greg drops his head and squeezes his eyes shut as he makes a fist. “Everything feels so wrong.”

“I know,” Sherlock whispers. “I know it does.”

“I don’t know how to start making it better.”

“Not reading newspapers would be a start.”

Greg presses a finger into his shoulder. “Don’t be an arse.”

Sherlock draws him in again, and Greg sinks back into his hold. A hand curls around the back of his neck, and lips press against his forehead. “Do you think I missed it?” Sherlock asks. “Do you think I didn’t know how alone you were? I kept trying to make you come to me. I kept telling you to take credit for the cases, I told you those people you went one dates with weren’t right for you, but you never listened…”

“John puts all the cases on his blog.”

“I tried to stop him.”

“Yeah, well, according to John, John always knows best.”

“Well, both of us know he is often an idiot.”

Greg huffs a laugh. “What is it with you and idiots, huh? You seem to attract them.”

“You’re not an idiot. I’m simply smarter than you.”

Greg rolls his eyes. “And what about those dates, anyway? You kept telling me to go on them, and then you kept telling me they’re all wrong for me so don’t bother. I mean, why don’t you tell me who’s right for me instead of letting me go on dinners with people I can’t hold a conversation with? What’s all about that?”

“Er…”

Greg peers up at him. “Well?” 

Sherlock raises his eyebrows, opens his mouth and closes it again. “Well, I… It would be a bit presumptuous to point out who I thought would be good for you.”

Greg blinks. Holds his eyes. And... “Oh,” Greg whispers.

“Yes, oh.”

“Why didn’t you… say anything?”

“A few teething problems. You were depressed, I didn’t want to take advantage, I wasn’t even sure if you liked me that way anymore. It felt like you tolerated me at best, and you’ve stopped smiling at me when I turn my back and I thought you’d…” Sherlock manages a half smile. “Well, I thought you’d figure it out eventually.”

“Uh huh.”

Sherlock quirks a smile. “Surprise.”

“Yeah. Big one.”

“You don’t find that in your newspapers. Or your bag of chips.”

“Nope. No, I don’t find that in a bag of chips…” Greg frowns at him. “Is this your way of telling me to stop drowning my sorrows in fish and chips?”

“On the contrary, I hope in future you’ll drown your sorrows while eating fish and chips with me. I think it has two benefits. One, neither of us are alone. Two, we both start to talk through all the things that have gone wrong between us. Like how you’re still grieving for me. Like how I always pretended I didn’t know your name, because it made you think I didn’t care. Because now I’ve repeated your name to you, you know I do care. And now you know how much I care about you, you’re allowing yourself to hope the hope you always ignored. The hope that I will love you back. I’m telling you now, that I know, that I’ve always known. That I was going to act on it, then Moriarty made me jump off a roof and then everything…”

“Everything was fucked up.”

“Just so. Then I killed Magnussen, and everything spiralled out of control, but I was hoping, waiting for you to catch up… Perhaps I should have tried harder, but no one knows me like you do, I thought you’d see it, eventually.”

“I… I don’t know what to say, right now.”

“That’s fine. I’ve said enough for both of us.”

Greg swallows and tries to comprehend it, but his head still hurts like hell. “Yeah. Sherlock.” He takes a long breath, and some of the weight lifts from him. “I’m not really okay.”

“I know that.” 

“And you’re not really doing okay either.” 

“Yeah. It’s been five weeks since I took drugs.”

“You’re doing well.”

“I can do better. Help me?”

Greg doesn’t need to think it through. “If you’ll do the same for me.”

“I’ve been trying.”

“Not blatantly enough for me to tell.”

“Clearly. Greg… Greg, I’m sorry. For everything.”

Greg’s eyes fall closed. He drops his forehead to Sherlock’s chest. “I’ve already forgiven you everything.”

“No, you haven’t,” Sherlock whispers. “But it’s okay. We’ll both try to forgive me together.”

Greg flicks his eyes up to his. The kiss they share is chaste, but lingering, as they hold onto one another and shiver. Sherlock takes his hand and they begin to walk from the park. 

Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, Greg, his dad used to say. 

Greg squeezes Sherlock’s hand. He’ll try to forget the headlines that have dominated his life of late. Those headlines like 'Sherlock - back from the dead'. Those headlines like 'Murderer?' He’ll try to move on from the memories etched into his brain, and forget the words like betrayal and lies and despair and murder. He’ll try, because this is the first time since Sherlock returned that the grey cloud has begun to lift. 

Alright dad, he thinks. I’ll try it your way.

He'll share a bag of chips with Sherlock. 


End file.
